Don't let it snow, don't let it snow, don't let it snow. · 7:05am Dec 22nd, 2023
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas~
And I kind of hate it. Now, that's not to say I hate Christmas, I genuinely love it. It is my favorite time of the year and I have a great deal of fond memories of the season. What I hate is snow, that icky cold stuff.
Being born in Texas, the image above may be frightful to you. the year before last gave us a once in a century freeze that practically turned the world off for about a week. A handful of days so cold and dark that the power didn't need to be on for the fridge and the freezer to to do their jobs, even inside the house. A fire constantly burning, not just for the sake of it, but because it was necessary to keep warm. Frozen pipes, not having secure sources of water, power being knocked out for three whole days. And yet, this is not the reason I hate snow. I spent time with my parents on those days, I built that 1000 piece puzzle of this image I bought at BC2019, and for me, personally, nothing particularly bad happened.
What makes me hate snow is the fact that I used to drive a motorcycle. Most of the year in Texas this is totally fine. December, January, and February however get dicey on a bike. It was my main form of transportation for the better part of four years, and though I had the winter gear, It was still difficult to take the bike out when it got so cold. Still, when I'd just gotten the thing, my very first big boy purchase after finishing college and getting a real job, I took it out at every opportunity.
It was November of 2018 when I first bought the bike. I'd been driving it for a couple of weeks and I was going to a small group one night in December. One of the first really cold night of the year, it was raining and visibility was poor. We'd wrapped up and I was heading home when the road I normally took was closed. I had to take a detour which involves a very sharp corner. Wet, cold, and green, I went into the turn thinking I knew what I was doing and suddenly found myself standing and running as my bike slid out from under me and away into the ditch. By the time I figured out what had happened, the car behind me had stopped to check on me. I ran over and picked the bike up and drove off like nothing had happened, but this was just the first scary incident.
Next winter comes around and because I'm stubborn and it's cheaper to ride the bike than take my old decrepit car, I take it out in the 32 degree weather and the fog to work. Misfortune strikes as I go to zip up my bike jacket. The tab to the zipper is just gone. Disappeared somewhere off into the unknown. Not only that, but this particular zipper has an anti reverse system where a button has to be depressed for it to unzip. After making it to work, I manage to get the jacket unzipped, but I know that i can't do that again. Again, it starts raining, it gets dark before I go home, and I get to drive home in the fog in the rain with a broken motorcycle jacket, freezing half to death all the way back.
Needless to say, I didn't take it much in the winter after that. However, that doesn't make things much better.
Later, while driving my car on the way home from work, the cold has struck with extra force and the snow is upon us. Schools are being closed, the county is dusting off the sand trucks, and I am told to go ahead and get home. Right before I make it back, just as I'm on the final stretch, somebody makes an emergency stop and I have to perform the same maneuver. The car slides on the ice of course, my front passenger side wheel slips off the road, but I manage to stop before a collision happens. I make it home, and once the ice is gone, I prepare to go to work the next day. Only, my tire is flat. Wasn't sure what was wrong, but whatever, we air it up a bit and I head on to work. Leaving work, the tire looks low again. there has to be a hole in it or something, so I take it to a discount tire to have them look at it. Apparently, that little slide off the edge of the road cracked the whole wheel. There's nothing wrong with the tire, the wheel is completely broken and needs to be replaced. with a snap, a hundred and sixty five dollars disappeared because someone else made a mistake while driving on the ice.
Of course, this is only the second instance of a broken wheel due to ice as the first happened in my second year of college in the forsaken land of Lubbock. There's always some kind of absurd freeze out there this time of year and mario kart physics apply. I'd only been driving for about four years then and it was my first time really driving on ice like that. Not fun, very expensive.
Speaking of driving, did you know that the Japanese driving test sucks ass? Let's run through it: First, you pay 2550JPY and take a written test of ten questions. If you've been driving for any time at all, you know all this stuff and it's whatever. There's maybe one or two japan specific questions on there, but you learn pretty quickly while driving here. Minimum passing score is 90, so if you actually don't know more than one, you're fucked. From there, you get to go take out the student driver car with a pair of instructors in the back. You can't go off the road at any point, you can't miss stop signs, you can't hit anything, obvious things. Don't speed either, but when on a straight away, you must hit about 40kph (~25mph), and to take a turn, you must slow down dramatically, almost to a complete stop, and not go more than 10kph through a turn.
If you don't get a perfect score, you fail.
I found out about the 10kph turning rule only after completing my initial test. Since coming to Japan, I have never observed anyone taking a turn this slowly. You're liable to get hit by another car in doing so. TO PREPARE STUDENTS FOR DRIVING ON THE ROAD, THEY HAVE THEM SLOW TO DANGEROUS SPEEDS TO TURN. Anyways, I got failed for driving like a normal person and not practically stopping before turns. And not, like, before sharp corners, they complained about how fast I was turning on the outer edge of the track where they literally have you do a loop and want you up to 40 on the straight. Still, this was my first time taking it. Everyone else there had taken it three or more times, and still, only two of the four of us passed.
Pro tip: you can have your license renewed anywhere in the US, and for some reason, if your license comes from Hawaii, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, or Washington, you don't have to take a test to get it transferred to a Japanese license. Why? Fuck you, that's why. Welcome to the bureaucracy state, where all rules are arbitrary, you'll never know if you're breaking one, and if the police feel like it, they have the right to hold you for 30 days until they can pin you with something. If you're sentenced to less than a year, you don't get deported until that sentence is served, either.
Am I still going to get my license next month? Yes. Am I ever leaving this country? No, I love it here. Do I still think that there's some seriously fucked shit going in in this place? Absolutely, but where else in the world is there not? Sometimes, it's frustrating to root for your favorite team when they constantly shoot themselves in the foot. Ah, well, I should be moving somewhere further south come April, so we'll see where I end up next. I'm told the test is harder the more rural the area, and next year I should be in a significantly bigger city. For my first year in Japan, Shimane has been nice. I made a real friend, I learned my job and came to love it, and I've improved my Japanese to a workable level. It'll be interesting to reread this come next year and see how things have changed.
Anyways, that's all from me. I plan to have that Bionic Titan story done in the next few days, and hopefully posted by Christmas, if not before the year ends at least. And next month, the rough draft of Star Overhead V6 should be complete too.
Until next time~
—KCZ
I hate the cold... but I'm still kinda jealous.
I recall last year well. Mostly because it was only after I'd driven the two hours to my parents' place that the coming freeze was announced. And so on Christmas Eve my mother and I drove all the way back to my place just to shut off the water and freeze-prep my new house and go all the way back to their place in a day, arriving late to the Christmas Eve family dinner and having to make do with leftovers.
...
Still would like to see snow again.
My sister never got a driver's license in Japan. She's a city girl through-and-through and is perfectly fine using mass transportation to go anywhere. Which, having been where she lives a few times, I kind of get. Only time it proves a problem is when she needs to get to the airport.
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I don't live in the city and I like to go places, so it's a necessity, unfortunately.